Chapter 8

Cyrus 1.3

Cyrus sat cross-legged on the pond inside the Wolf Godswood. The pond was small, a couple meters in diameter, he sat there and felt the hot water rise up from under him. The Godswood stood at the far back of the castle with the depressing Ash color walls stopping the view of the broken mountains of the north.

A white large tree overlooked the whole grove as everything in the surrounding area was covered in a pale see through mist. This white tree has leaves the color of blood that glow with the light coming from the sun. Giving the mist a prisma like red colored sparks. The steam coming from the pond affect the humid air that was all year long in the north, giving this groove a year long mist, day in and night out.

On the trunk of the large white tree behind him there was a carving of a face with a wide open mouth cover in sharp twisting fangs. The face was of a creature that look half human and half wolf. It's eyes were open as well and it looked like it was staring at Cyrus back.

"That was dangerous. I didn't know those Frost Giant Kings were as strong as me. I almost died for god sakes." Not that God gave a shit about him but the words just came out naturally. "If weren't for those remaining members sacrifice I and the others wouldn't have made it out without a scratch." He looks at his shoulder and closes his eyes to continue his Breathing Exercises.

On his shoulder there was a gaping, disgusting wound made from some blunt weapon. His skin was cave inwards with his shoulder plate shatter. This was made by the sharp and fast grab of the enemy, luckily he spun and dodged at the last moment. But who would have thought that a scraping thumb from the Frost Giant King was enough to shatter his shoulder.

Right now his split up flesh was as if it had a mind of its own. It squirm and gave the feeling of little individual things waving and moving towards each other and connecting again. With every breath he felt his body heal up, he has been at it since the late hours of the night and his recovery was inhumanly fast. He didn't have any healing herbs, he didn't take any potions for healing, he didn't have a clerk to produce a healing spell. He didn't have any outside help, well only one…

Beside the pond there was a girl shivering on top of a rock. She stares at Cyrus naked body in fear. On her neck there were two holes dripping with blood slowly. Cyrus drank from her three times before bringing his injury under control and starting his Breathing Exercises to control his bodily functions.

His blindfold was covered in his own blood and he took it off. "Girl" she jumped at his call, like a frightened kitten. "Please, please my Lord, I can't anymore, it hurts so bad, my, my body feels like, like burning." With a running nose and tears coming down like a waterfall she kneeled down towards the pond. Cyrus ignored her and continued. "Can you scrub this in the water and laid it off on the rock to dry." He threw the stain blindfold over and it fell down on the soft grass in front of the girl. She picks it up and walk towards the water to wipe off the blood. In the process her body was trembling like a rabbit.

Right now in Cyrus face there was a dark grey cloth that look old and stiff. Even though it looks like old rags it wasn't because of the beautiful and exotic embroidery on it. Circles came like rings or halos above angels head. They were sparsely located and it seemed like they didn't have any set of order or pattern in them but at the center of his forehead in between his eyebrows there was a serpentine creature eating its own tail embroidered in black lines with the red rings around it. Above the crown of this creature head there stood a cross in the middle of an overlapping circle with unknown small, barely visible character drawn upon. This circle was larger and laid exactly on the center of his forehead and below was the wide mouth creature eating its own tail.

Cyrus continue breathing as the mist slowly swirls around him. The Force inside of him was passing through his Veins. These veins aren't like the veins were blood pass through, these Veins are made completely out of Martial Force. After reaching the Aura of Reality the Veins that weren't supposed to be there were born thanks to the understanding of Reality. The origins of these Veins was in a place below the chest but above the abdomen in between the lungs.

The Aura of Reality was a magical phenomenon that not only conclude that Reality exists and could be replicate, it also shows that Reality can be controlled one way or another. This origin takes the form and shape of a flesh and blood organ. It was located in between the lungs, directly below the heart, in the center most part of the body. Maesters call it an Aperture. This small organ work similar to a heart, but it breaths like the lungs. It captures the Force of the world and transferred to the Aperture, and the Aperture will copy the heart and pump out the Force around the body. Just like how blood passed through the blood vessels and reach every organ and part of the body, the Force follow the same laws.

The Breathing Exercises he practices is one that stimulate his bodily functions and train the quality of Force. After all, the Force is an Energy Source that needs to be polish like a weapon or it would become blunt and useless in the long run.

Beside the white tree, the other trees were normal tall pine trees. The sun brought a pale redness to the grove and where Cyrus stood there was now a red swirl following the wind. The pond water was a deep black as if it were hundreds of feet deep were the light didn't reach. The young girl stood beside the rock trembling and sweating all over. Her skin was pale and her veins were visible through her skin. The veins were slowly turning black and the girl felt suffocated. She scratched her throat as a burning heat courses through her body and a sense of dryness overcame her senses.

Cyrus was aware of the girl change. There has truly never been another human he has bitten before, Belia was the first human in his memory that he drank from. The second will be this young girl close to his age. The strange occurrence didn't escape his senses, he could feel her pain, her thirst. He was all too familiar with these feelings.

While he Exercises his Breathing the girl took her last breath and topple to the side and case movement. From behind that rag of old cloth, two red eyes illuminate the pale mist. His eyes stare at the corpse for a long while, minutes reach an hour and his wound was barely heal. At least every bone came back to their places and his ripped skin miraculous was woven back together by a special force not belonging to nature.

He stood up and walked towards his mess up clothes and shook his head. He cover what he could and took his damp white cloth and tied it on top of the old looking rag. He stretch his shoulder and found it painful to move, he pouted his lips and walk out of the grove. Before he could step out of the trees shades he heard a sound behind him, surprise he turned around and saw that girl that was younger than him standing from the ground. Her movements were stiff and she was letting raspy breaths escape her mouth.

Cyrus tilted his head and stood rooted on the same spot. It was because in his vision, the black space he was accustomed to, saw nothing. But he could clearly feel her in front of him, she was there, but there was no hue outlining her body. There was no life that he could see. It was black like the void.

The girl reach in front of him and grab his torn out coat and fell on her knees, "it hurts, my throat hurts, my Lord, Lord, please I beg your pardon. No more, please make it stop." The girl cry resounded clearly in his ears and he looked down to where he found the choked voice.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked her. His voice was sweet and brought an unimaginable desire to the girl. She thought she feared him but now she wants to bite him, to taste him, something inside told her to do it. Cyrus smell the air and realized that the girl wet herself, her mind was scared but her body told her to follow her instincts.

Cyrus grabbed her by her forehand and drag her out of the Godswood. They soon reach the back of the castle and Cyrus put his head on one of the windows of the first floor, finding no one inside, he dragged the girl in.

While walking the small corridors of the first floor he went through the west wing of the castle to dodge anyone and everyone of the castle. But men plan and God plays. A servant boy was bringing back a mob and a bucket of dirty water to release it at the backyard and fill it up at the Well that was close to the backdoor from where Cyrus enter.

The servant was the same age as Cyrus and with a *SPLASH!* the bucket with dirty water was drop to the floor because of the scare the boy got. It wasn't because he found them at the now empty west wing of the castle but because of the girl Cyrus was dragging. Her skin was pale, paler than snow. Her veins that were seen through weren't green as they are supposed to look like but were black as ink. It ran across her arms and up her neck, covering her face and her eyes...those eyes were pitch black without an ounce of white In them. It looked as if she was possessed by some Demon.

Cyrus quickly chop at the boy's neck and knock him out cold. He grabbed the boy body and came back to the Godswood. He threw the body to the ground and sat on a rock and started thinking about the boy reaction. The boy was scared not because he found them, he wouldn't be scared because of that and neither because of his mess up clothes, he didn't even stare at him but at his back.

Cyrus started to hear weird sounds and look to his side. Looking down he sees the silhouette cover in that life color hue but it was trembling as if was in great pain, also there was a black spot taking half of his neck and the light was visibly diming as if it has been drained. He smelled the air and the smell of blood hit his nose. After the body case moving, it lost his life color and he looked at the black spot. "How was it?" He asked because he realized what had just happened. Did this girl just inherited my thirst for fresh, raw blood?

"Kyaa!" What answer him was an ear piercing scream of the little scared girl. "I didn't do it, it wasn't me, I was force, I was force. They told me that if I don't drink it, I would be next. That the pain would be worse. I didn't know what to do, I, I..."

The girl was trembling all over, a soft hand patted her shoulder and she looks up at the youth who brought her to this nightmare. "What's your name?" His voice was soft and calming to her ears, her heart skip a beat and she blurted out, "Blair, daughter of Master Jirald." Cyrus nodded and helped her up.

Right now his injury weren't stable and he needed to accompany Bethran to that welcoming banquet. They enter the castle through one of the back door and finally reach Cyrus room on the third floor of the castle. As Cyrus room was more on the backside were a couple of towers surrounded, connected by bridges, Cyrus and Blair weren't found by anyone.

Reaching his room he quickly went to the drawers and took a bottle with red thick liquid inside. He gulped all down and sat on the floor, leaning his back to the wall. The girl stood standing by the door and Cyrus look up at her, even though he couldn't see her, he could feel her, smell her more clearly than looking at her through vision itself. "Sit on the bed. Don't mind me. My body just hurt, I needed that." The girl seemed that she couldn't go against him and sat down.

"How do you feel?" He asked her as he was curious at what the hell happened with this girl. Beside Belia, she's the other human who he has ever bite. Belia didn't have any change nor effects but this girl was different. She became slightly similar to him. Lusting over fresh blood. He knows that humans don't have such fetish, of what he knows, beside those humans that do it for pleasure and for some religious reasons, there's none like him that treat blood as food.

"Scare, cold, with burning lava running through my veins." Cyrus hold his chin in thought and ask, "what do you smell? Are different smell now entering your nose and are those smell taking visible color in your eyes?" The girl shrank her neck and answer "yes" in a low pitch voice. She was scared of her change, what would she say to her mother when she sees her again?

"Do you feel hungry? But this hunger isn't like having your stomach ache in displeasure but a hunger that strike pain around your body. A pain that affect your heart rhythm and cause you wish upon death?" These are some of his symptoms when his hunger strike. The others would be losing control of his body and his body morphing to something not entirely human per say.

"Yes, yes, yes but, but it went away, after, after I, I did that." She nodded her head repeatedly but slowly shrank her neck back again when she remembers the disgusting thing she has done. "Do you have something different about yourself. Maybe your nails grew longer, thicker and sharper unlike what a human is supposed to grow like? Just like a beast claw?"

"No, nothing like that. Only...my skin is too pale." Cyrus let out a sigh and said, "look at the mirror and check your body while I go to take a bath." He took off his clothes and threw them to a corner and walked towards the bathroom at the side of the room. It was a spacious room with an open window overlooking the towers of the castle that surround his room. The bath was a big pool with steaming hot water, at the bottom of the pool were stone slates are supposed to make the floor it was covered in small blue gem like rocks. They sparse around the big pool and brought a hot, fiery breath to the water.

There were small streams coming down the wall replenishing the water that filter out through the small holes at the four corners of the pool. The cold water coming from the faucet on the walls produce more steam that cover the whole bathroom.

Cyrus needs to give credit to the Maesters that created these faucet system around the castle. With the beast in the inner stables calmly moving in their own space they use the beasts natural force to make the water circulate to the important places of the castle, like the bathrooms and kitchen. Traveling through the stone bamboo pipes inside the walls, water was always rapidly available.

He leaned on the far end wall and let the cold water coming out of the faucet on the wall to drop off on his head. That cool his head, beside the weird accident the things in his mind were about the Frost Giants. For what he knows the Frost Giants once travel the catacombs below to reach the south but after thousands of years the passage below the icy plains most have crumbled by now, most covered in ice.

What makes him worried was that a single Frost Giant King was strong enough to give him a life threatening wound, if it wasn't for Stonequake, Frozefire and Devour he wouldn't be able to injure completely those Frost Giant Kings bodies. He never felt weak before, well he always compared himself to the humans and the strongest human he knows is Brethan and he was a Hero in that human war twenty something years ago.

To be declared a Hero one must be at the top of the human race in terms of battle power however those things...their bodies were just incredible. The difference between a Frost Giant and a Frost Giant King is like a young cadet starting his Martial career and a Master who has developed his Aura of Reality and has cultivated the Aperture for years. The difference is too vast and if what the writing on the catacombs walls are nothing but the truth then that old thing that is tens of thousands of years old must be a terrifying existence. The thought of such creature gave Cyrus a feeling he never thought of feeling before...fear.